gO 0" TRADITION, PARODY, AND ADAPTATION

Sherman, Samuel. Legendary Singing Cowboys. New York: FriedmanlFairfax, 1995. Stanfield, Peter. Horse Opera: The Strange History of the 1930s Singing Cowboy.

Chicago: University ofIllinois Press, 2002. Tuska,]on. TheAmerican West in Film: CriticalApproaches to the Western. Lincoln:

University ofNebraska Press, 1988. Wright, Will. Six Guns and Society: A Structural Study of the Westem. Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1975.

3 0 John Shelton Lawrence

THE LONE RANGER Adult Legacies ofaJuvenile Western

LONE RANGER: Tonto, from this day on I'm going to devote my life to establishing law and order, to make the West a decent place to live.

TONTO: That good.

-"Enter the Lone Ranger,"TV genesis episode of1949

,Born at Detroit radio station WXYZ in 1933, the Lone Ranger became a

great twentieth-century mythmaking franchise. His trajectory ascended out .ofradio, pulp novels, advertising endorsements, licensed merchandise,

': and fan clubs into the sphere of serialized television and the B Western. As " the Ranger's commercial flare dimmed, he plummeted toward ITClWrather's

widely scorned feature The Legend ofthe Lone Ranger (1981) and the much­"deridedWarner Bros. television pilot "The Lone Ranger" (February 26,2003). iIn that failed two-hour resurrection, the Ranger is "Luke Hartman," a brown­hatted Harvard law studentwith New Age tendencies and hot springs fantasies about Tonto's sexy sister. Even the silver bullets go missing.

Yet these latter-day signs ofdecline should not mask the Ranger-imprinted perhero personae that still excite American screen audiences. Nor should e ignore the Lone Ranger-based metaphors that survive as terms for

!Danagerial style or the U.S. approach in foreign policy. To understand the world's cultural and political vocabulary, one must review the Ranger's calling ~to make the West a decent place to live." This chapter will "return to those ,thrilling days ofyesteryear"-the phrase so often intoned by the radio programs ~nnouncers-to sketch the Ranger's complex mythic legacy. In clarifYing this

tural transmission, a pair of episodes from the radio and television series

82 0< THE LONE RANGER

Radio success parlayed into novels, then feature films and television. Dust jacket from 1937 edition, Grossett and Dunlap.

prove central in condensing the narratives, icons, and metaphors from this

franchise.

THE RANGER'S BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE

In the beginning, radio station owner George W.Trendle, writer Fran Striker, and WXYZ drama director James JewelF aimed the Lone Ranger toward a

juvenile audience. The series, which eventually drew in many voices, hands, and faces, never wavered from its youthful focus during its greatest commercial,N'

'success-estrom-r9J3tcjI95I.ForchUdren,therepetitive-struGtureand.simply~~

JOHN SHELTON LAWRENCE 0< 83

,

',$;

polarized moral world were appealing.2 Each thirty-minute radio episode was

bookended by Rossini's overture to William Td4 musical bridges from other classics, and verbal incantations that children loved to memorize, transform,

and playfully toss at one another: "Come on, Kemo Sabe," "That good, Kemo

Sabe," "Hi-yo Cheerios" (a witty reference to the breakfast cereal sponsorship).

Each program ended with a formulaic "thanks to the Lone Ranger" or a

rustically spoken question: "Who was that masked man, anyway?" each time

answered by a sage voice saying, "Why, don't you know? That was the Lone

Ranger!" Then the Ranger's farewell cry could be heard: "Hi-yo, Silver-­

aawaaay!"--with a husky intonation and an elegant stretching of the final

word. These radio episodes, which ran thrice weekly for twenty-two years

until 1954 (Holland 146), have achieved an immortality transcending the

marketplace. First available on records, then on tape, they n<?W circulate in

noncommercial DVD sets that contain hundreds ofMP3 format files. Some

episodes can be downloaded from radio nostalgia sites. Along with other

collectibles-cap guns, action figures, comic books, Kix Cereal's Atom Bomb

Ring, the cardboard buildings of the frontier town offered as Cheerios

premiums-these disks are perpetually available to bidders on eBay.

In addition to the intrinsically engaging dramas ofcrime and apprehension

in the Old West, a significant factor in the Lone Ranger's.commercial success

with children was parental approval. Adults were enthusiastic about the moral

content of the Ranger tales; they were happy to allow the broadcast in their

. homes or to place licensed Ranger merchandise in their children's hands.

Illustrating just one of many commendations earned by the franchise are Senator Homer Ferguson's words of celebration for the Ranger's twentieth­

anniversary radio broadcast:

Every program came to a successful conclusion with the moral message to be learned from the Ranger's adventures....

George Trendle built in characteristics that would endear the Lone Ranger to the young and at the same time teach them the principles of good citizenship. In every program the Ranger illustrated the basic tenets ofhonesty, patriotism, fair play, tolerance, and a sympathetic :understanding ofpeople and their rights and privileges.

The Lone Ranger himself is a model ofAmerican manhood.... The Ranger neither smokes, drinks intoxicating beverages, nor uses profanity.

. '..jqyoted in Yoggy 14)

84 0 Tm: LONE RA:-<GER

On this occasion, the script of the program itself was inserted into the

Congressional Record. Reflecting the spirit ofidealism extolled by Senator Ferguson, the franchise

strove to be a good national citizen. It founded the Lone Ranger Safety Club, in which the "Safety Scout Pledge" included commitments to "always tell the truth....To be kind to birds and animals....To keep myself neat and clean, To obey my father and mother."There were other ventures, such as the Lone Ranger Peace Patrol, which targeted the purchase ofUS. savings bonds (Yoggy 13-14). Few programs of the era could compete with such a patriotic aura.

THE FIRST FILMS AND TELEVISION PRODUCTIONS

Visual programming capitalized on this radio success. Serialized films from Republic studios came with The Lone Ranger (1938),3 which was quickly followed by another fifteen-part compilation called The Lone Ranger Rides Again (1939). Exploiting George Trendle's open-ended license for the serials, RepUblic played loose with the character. In The Lone Ranger five aCtors acted as if they might be the Ranger, each wearing identical clothes, hats, and alternately the distinctive mask-taking it on and off. Feeling the mythic essence was diluted with this sort of guessing game and naked faces, George Trend1e reasserted control of the screen franchise, stipulating that such unmasking would end (Holland 243).

Waiting a decade, Trend1e authorized a Warner Bros. Lone Ranger television series that began in 1949. Overlapping the radio series for five years, it had a 221-episode run lasting through 1957 (Lentz 282-93). These visualizations of the Ranger's way of justice straightforwardly expressed the character values and vision conveyed on the radio. Yet, being budget Westerns, the television programs looked gaunt. What was cheap to convey through studio sound effects-herds of frightened animals, tribes of yelling Indians, wagon trains, and so forth-was far too expensive for weekly {11m shoots with budgets ranging from $12,500 in 1949 to 518,000 in 1954 (Holland 296). The Lone Ranger and Tonto's humble camp for the night, always set by the same boulder in the brushy hills, revealed the financial limits.

Yet Clayton Moore andJay Silverheels gave excitement to the series.Their juvenile-credible acting and physical grace engaged viewers. To see them swing onto their horses in unison to exit from an admiring community was one of

JOHN SHELTON LAWRENCE 0< 85

the TV Western's most awaited moments. This pair became the most loved of all the performers who ever played the roles for the screen. Their popularity and enthusiastic identification with their roles doubtless impaired the ability of the franchise to survive their departure. No one ever looked or sounded quite right after they were gone.

The successful Moore-Silverheels performances allowed the franchise to create three full-length films that permanently encapsulate the mythic legacy: the television compilation Legend qfthe Lone Ranger (1952), Warner Bros.' LoneRanger (1956), and United Artists' Lone Ranger and the Lost City 0/" Gold (1958). Even though Legend strung together three television episodes, it contained "Enter the Lone Ranger" from the serial's first broadcast on September 15, 1949. "Enter" successfully visualized the origins story for the

.Lone Ranger that had matured through years of accretion, only receiving its radio broadcast as "The Origin of the Lone Ranger" in the prior year on June

1948.4 As "Enter"worked synergisticallywith the often rebroadcast "Origin" on the radio, the Lone Ranger themes became succincdy and artfully established for several generations ofAmericans. C

THE HEROIC MYfHOLOGY OF THE GENESIS

At the Lone Ranger's birth on the radio avoice announces: "This is the legend ofa man who buried his identity to dedicate his life to the service ofhumanity and country.... Early settlers in the West had to be brave men and women. ... There was danger on every side, wild beasts, savage Indians, and the Cavendish gang" ("Origin"). Butch Cavendish is an outlaw whose rogues terrorize the whole Southwest. Pursuing Cavendish, a group of six Texas Rangers led by Dan Reid, the Lone Rangers brother, are led into an ambush, where they are trapped by rifle fire on the canyon floor at Bryant's Gap. All die except the man who becomes the Lone Ranger. The surviving Reid wakes up days later in a cave, where he has been carried by an Indian, who introduces himself as a man rescued years before when Tonto's village was attacked by renegades. Reid had even continued to wear a friendship ring given to him Tonto when they parted as teenagers. Qy.eried about the fate of the other Rangers, Tonto replies, "Other Texas Rangers-all dead. You only Ranger left. You lone Ranger now" ("Enter"). Thus Tonto's pidgin English creates one of the most distinctive names in American mythological history.

l 86 Q'; THE LONE RANGER

Together they resolve to track down the Cavendish gang, a task the Ranger sees as requiring a hidden identity.Tonto neatly cuts a mask from the brother's vest that had carried a silver Texas Ranger's star. In addition to abandoning his own badge, the Lone Ranger, through the altered vest, symbolically renounces regular law enforcement for a quasi-vigilante role. Paradoxically, he

works outside the law in his efforts to aid the law. Evoking the crusading zeal ofthis vision, the radio narrator intones the depth of resolve: "1n the Ranger's

eye there was a light that must have burned in the eyes ofknights in armor, a light that through the ages must have lifted the souls of strong men who fought for justice, for God!" The Ranger articulates his unconditional

commitment: "Tonto, from this day on I am going to devote my life to establishing law and order, to make theWest a decent place to live" ("Enter").

In one of his earliest essays on the Western genre, John Cawelti captured the

"

'

~

, Texas behaved, they'were to be tolerated. When they did not, they were to be

expelled or eliminated" (294). So when Tonto says "them all good men," such symbolic harmony carries little historical truth. Tonto not only becomes the constant companion and follower of the Lone Ranger but also takes up the

, crusading ideology, which had played such havoc with the American Indians.

He becomes the Dr. Watson in the Lone Ranger's pursuit of criminals. A ;,more striking symbol ofco-optation could scarcely be imagined, but it provides

peculiar outsider status of the Ranger, which became a model for Shane and many other gunfighter figures: "Though he was all good and his enemies were

all bad and though he always acted as an ally ofthe pioneer community ... the

Ranger remained curiously isolated and separated from the community."Taking, the Ranger and those who followed in his mythic footsteps, Cawelti suggests

that audiences "no longer preferred to see their western heroes finally integrated.

into the regenerated community" ("God's Country" 150). The selfless campaign of the outsider for decency in the West is further~

signified by his renunciation of familial love and personal wealth. Tonto and Silver are to be his only companions. As the Ranger expressed it to Tonto in the radio program's twentieth-anniversary broadcast in 1953, "1 couldn't continue without you. As long as we ride, we ride together" ("Flashback"). Although the Ranger jointly owned a silver mine with his brother, he dedicates

the proceeds from his secret cache to pay the minimal expenses for his crusade and to make silver bullets, "a symbol that means justice by law. 1 seek the

defeat by law of every criminal in the West" ("Enter"). The friendship with Tonto suggests a remarkable degree of racial

r~c~~~iliation, in drastic contrast to the reality ofrecurring animosity between Indians and fheTeXas~Rangersdurll1gafifty-year~strugglfil...thatlastecLuntil 1875 (Hollon 42-45). Robert Utley's recent study of the Texas Rangers summarizes these antagonisms: "Even though Indians antedated white, immigrants by centuries, Texans regarded them as interlopers, uncivilized wretches who did not know how to use the land. When the tribes that lived in

JOHN SHELTON LAWRENCE Q'; 87

a powerful symbolic conftrmation of the white man's vigilante code.

Of equal importance mythically is the Lone Ranger's taming by voice commands ofthe great white stallion Silver after saving him from a gory death

inl1!ythic battle with a "giant buffalo." It is part of the voluntary renunciation through which each member of the team chooses the life of moral crusade.

hus another member of the team establishes his credentials as companion ter for justice through the status of innocent victim. Each member of the

te~ is now a redeemed redeemer. The powerful horse responds instinctively :dthe sound of his name and accepts the gentle mastery of his savior. The

adio narrator describes the scene: :J

As the halter touched Silver, he trembled as if from a chill. Every instinct told him that he must flee at once to preserve his freedom. Yet he stood his ground. It wasn't gratitude that kept him there. It was something stronger. Some mysterious bond offriendship and understanding. He heard the man's voice and he liked it.

"Silver, Silver, we're going to be partners!" says the Lone Ranger. Tonto is amazed: "Him let you use halter!" "Give me the saddle." Tonto replies, "Oh, no horse like that take saddle." ("Origin")

The Lone Ranger then states the mythic point as he places the saddle on the miracle horse that renounces freedom for service to a master: "There never

'was a horse like this. Now, Silver, we're going to work together" ("Origin").

The narrator reiterates the theme: "No hooves had ever beat the plains

7~ th~t:h.lln~~~ ~~~~~~~~~t g;reat horse Silver!" The. ope~ng~nes of : the radio program henceforth feature SilVerMafull membel'oftlleredempffve-­

,team. He not only responds to his master's voice without being trained but also seems to "understand" the vigilante work in which he is engaged. The peculiar capabilities of radio sound effects make it possible to render Silver

88 0' THE LONE RANGER

., ....~,.

Studio publicity shot of The Lrme Rangers most popular team on the screen­Clayton Moore, Jay Silverheels, Silver, and Scout.

virtually human, whinnying his assent to utterances of Ranger ideals. In his moral sagacity, Silver becomes the prototype for several redeemer animals­

Lassie, Flipper, Trigger-in American popu1ar culture. The speed of his incomparable horse provides the Lone Ranger with a

crucial element of the superhuman: rapid mobility, the most characteristic and coveted form of freedom in America, the ability to transcend space and time. In the genesis episodes the need for such speed was displayed in the

JOHN SHELTON LAWRENCE 0< 89

Lone Ranger's inability to overtake Butch Cavendish with his former steed. ;~My next horse must be faster,~ he says, expressing his resolution to take the culprit alive and bring him to justice ("Origin"). Silver develops into a symbol

'of tireless endurance and strength, allowing the Ranger to accomplish miraculous feats that raise him above the merely heroic level.

While extralegal violence and personal vengeance stand central in the Ranger's ideology, there is an elaborate effort to downplay objectionable features oflynch justice historically associated with vigilantism. The masked rider is .ot acting as a law enforcement oBicer, despite wearing the black mask of

:poth that had borne the star ofjustice. But he invariably turns his captured 'ooks over to the authorities for punishment. This happens despite the fact at he operates against the background ofineffective, and frequently corrupted,

enforcement. As for his inerrant guns, the radio program always begins 'h loud pistol shots interspersed with the overture to W£lliam Tell, yet the

ne Ranger never kills anyone. Tonto initially encourages him to kill ;:;avendish. But in the initial episode ofthe television series, the Rang.;r pledges

:0 him, "I'm going to devote my life to establishing law and justice.... I'll c ot to wound, not to kill" ("Enter"). With superhuman accuracy his silver ·bullets strike the hands of threatening bad guys-evoking a mere "Yow!" or "My hand!" Yet their evil powers are neutralized. In an elaborate extension of

"the ideology ofcool zeal, which relieves the vigilante ofguilt in the exercise of what appears to be "hot" vengeance, the Lone Ranger's precisely calibrated power enSures minimal injury. This view resonates with the cold war's theories of nuclear deterrence, where limitless power, calmly calculated, is celebrated as the ultimate defense because it presumably will never have to be used against the vast populations who are its targets. There seems to be a message that one escapes the ambiguity of violent power through even greater power and accuracy. In such transmutation, the superhuman quality ofpower allows the

. vigilante to become the saint. Taking together these narrative conventions and character markers for

the Lone Ranger, one finds a template for the American superhero's character

and environment:

1. The Bipolar Moral World: Good and evil are starkly defined, as in all melodrama (as opposed to tragedy or comedy). Even though the Ranger is part ofthe juvenile Western world, this bipolarity was often a feature of the adult Western and remains in the action-adventure fihn genre.

90 0< THE LONE RAt'<GER

2. The License of Innocence/Call of Destiny: The hero acquires his special role through a profound experience ofbeing a victim that motivates him to become an armed but selfless crusader who works solely for others. These negative experiences are presented as the call of destiny. As station owner George W. Trendle put it, the Lone Ranger would be "a guardian angel ... the embodiment of a granted prayer" (Harmon 202). This sense of calling

is eventually shared by every member of the crusading team. 3. The Supremacyof the Caucasian Male:The American superhero is awhite­

skinned man whose superiority is acknowledged by his constant and colonized companion,Tonto. Again, in Trendle's conception, the companion

to be someone as free as the Ranger himself-someone who couldn't, detract from the glory of the Ranger, someone who could talk little, contribute much" (Bicke1124). Properly subordinate to the white man with his perfect English, the endlessly clever Tonto never masters the pronouns

""we," or "he," and the perfecdy spoken Ranger never bothers to help him with his English despite their life companionship. As TedJojola points, out in his study ofNative Americanftlm actors,Jay Silverheels experienced' a kind of double subordination, both in the script and as the perpetually second-fiddle actor. Like Will Sampson, Dan George, and other distin­guished Native American performers, the MohawkJay Silverheels was lucky ". to be on the screen at all after decades of white actors' being stained for Indian roles (14). As for women, they exist in the Ranger's world to be rescued, not as partners or interesting companions. One can see in this the • juvenile version ofwholesomeness, but it is a pattern stamped into much of ' the adult film world as well.

4. The Disguised Identity and Outsider Role: The superhero emerges in a social world offailed institutions, where laws and elected leaders cannot be relied on to provide for the community's safety; because those incompetent " officials can be indifferent to the community's true needs as well as its savior, he cannot be a functioning member of that community or wear its, uniform. He must normally hide behind mask, cape, horn-rimmed glasses, or some other disguising role that maintains a secret identity. This outsider, status, accentuated by the serialized episodes in which he appears, precludes; marriage and normal family responsibilities.Though the Lone Ranger was never tempted, the mythic conventions display the woman and her pacific' values as a temptation to forsake the redemptive role. Symbolically, the rejection ofwomen becomes the price of saving the community.

JOHN SHELTON LI\.WRENCE 0< 91

Super Powers, Physical and Moral: The American superhero has remarkable powers of anticipation, physical strength, and moral intuition that allow him to act effectively and nearly invincibly in confronting evil. He never starts a fight but never loses one either, just as in any shootout he can fire his weapon second and hit his target first.

.6. The Calibration of Retaliatory Vengeance: The power of the American superhero is basically benign. If it hurts anyone at all, it is only the bad men;who deserve it, and only to the extent necessary to subdue them. The Ranger kills just one man, Butch Cavendish, and onlywhen forced to do so

, in self-defense. Even then he does not use one of his silver bullets but . engages in hand-to-hand struggle at the edge of a cliff ("Flashback").

:he Ranger's constellation of mythic conventions received almost immediate claim as edifying fare for the nation's children, and its echoes in adult

dramas attest its continuing resonance. C

This celebrated pattern in the Ranger tale is also one ofthe most important mplates for the "American monomyth," a pervasive model in American heroic

re.5 These mythic ingredients, though individual counterparts are Widely ,distributed in world mythological culture, received their unique blend first with the Lone Ranger and then became normative for succeeding generations of the American superhero tradition (Lawrence and Jewett). The Ranger's spirit lives on in all those lonely heroes of popular culture who take up the

cburden ofselflessly and disguisedly serving communities that are unworthy of : their openly proclaimed identity and democratic citizenship.

These mythic seeds later germinated in comic book characters such as Batman, Superman, Captain America, and Spider-Man. In movies we have

. figures like Shane, multiple John Wayne personae, Buford Pusser, Rambo, Dirty Harry; Luke Skywalker, the Steven Seagal personae, the Mel Gibson action personae,6 the Charles Bronson persona of the long-lived Death Wish

series, Walker: Texas Ranger, Neo of The Matnx, and numerous others. These :characters mutate the Lone Ranger formula in order to survive and to .'entertain-often through brutality-but they still reflect his legacy of -selflessness, lack of initiatory aggression, and finely calibrated retaliation. As Cawelti observes in Adventure, Mystery, and Romance, the Lone Ranger narratives, despite the crudity of their representations, "establish themselves ~o completely that almost everyone in the culture has some knowledge of them

,and what they stand for." Their popular formula "becomes an expression of a

92 0< THE LONE RANGER

basic pattern of meaning in the consciousness of many members of the audience" (300).Those cultural meanings possessed both negative and positive

valences that retain their charge today, as one discovers in surveying the legacies

of the Lone Ranger.

THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LEGACIES OF

THE LONE RANGER

Besides his place in the culture of entertainment, the Ranger lives on in the

expression ofpopular ideals or hopes. Jim Lichtman, a management consultant,

has incorporated his book The Lone Ranger's Code ofthe west:An Action-Packed Adventure in Values and Ethics with the Legendary Champion ofJustice into his· practice? The book recounts eight episodes from the Ranger, each followed by

an imaginary interviewinwhich Lichtman and the Ranger explore the underlying

moral principles. The business writer Jeffrey Gitomer has built a sales strategy·

around the idea ofworking quietly like the Lone Ranger: "He just went about

his business. Silently, doing his thing, giving value, asking for nothing, not even saying his name. That Lone Ranger was a heck of a salesperson" (24). In the field of foreign policy, Robert M. Perito paid tribute with his book Wbere Is tbe Lone Ranger Wben We Need Him? America's Searcb fir a Postcoo/lict Stability Force, which speaks somewhat wistfully about "the theme ofall the ... episodes.

Someone was in trouble and 'the Masked Rider ofthe Plains' came to the rescue"

(51). However, his treatise on the organization of global constabulary forces

does not advise secret identity, disguises, or extralegal uses ofpower.There really

are no "guardian angels" on the international horizon. It is merely a dream of

redemption from history--or perhaps ~ Wilsonian vision of American order .

whose realization has proved so difficult.

More typically, references to "the Lone Ranger" are invoked to raise

suspicions about a person who believes in magical powers or circumvents

favorably regarded conventions or the rule of law. In a recent instance,

Condoleezza Rice commented on national security adviser Richard Clark's

testimony about the lack ofurgency concerning terrorism in George W. Bush's

administration by remarking, "There was no silver bullet that could have prevented the 9/11 attacks." William Safire of the New York Times reminded his readers that Donald Rumsfeld invoked the futility ofthe silver bullet fantasy

JOHN SHELTON LAWRENCE 0< 93

just after 9/11: "In this battle against terrorism, there is no silver bullet" (28). Rumsfeld's point is surely beyond doubt.

The subjectivity of Lone Ranger accusations is manifest in the career of

"President Jimmy Carter. As a candidate for president he had stated, in the

words ofTheodore C. Sorenson, that "there would be no Kissinger-like Lone Ranger" in his administration (232). The dismissive insult had a foundation,

because Kissinger himself had styled the lone cowboy image for himself in a

famous interview with Oriana Fallaci. Characterizing his approach to foreign policy, he had said, "The Americans love the cowboy who comes into town all

alone on his horse, and nothing else. He acts and that is enough, being in the

right place at the right time, in sum a western. This romantic and surprising character suits me because being alone has always been part ofmy style" ("Men

ofthe Year"). The Lone Ranger appellation, in its derisory form, would return

to bite Carter, just as it stuck to Kissinger. Lance Morrow, essayist for Time, spoke of Carter's postpresidential career as a peacemaker, commenting that

"some of his Lone Ranger work has taken him dangerously dose to the

neighborhood of what we used to call treason" (79). Carter's peacemaking

'visits to North Korea in 1994-in defiance ofState Department advice against

.. such private initiatives-conform to the pejorative associations of the Lone

Ranger epithet.

The variability ofapplication related to Jimmy Carter is multiplied when

one looks into a comprehensive article collection such as Gale's InfoTrac

. OneFile, which yields more than three hundred titles containing "The Lone

Ranger."sTaking a more focused look with the Boolean search string "Bush,

George W. AND Lone Ranger AND Iraq" yielded ninety hits; viewpoints in the

articles either accused Bush of acting like the Lone Ranger or denied the

charge. Other recipients of the Ranger label included George H. W. Bush (in

the run-up to the Persian GulfWar of1991); Neil Bush (in connection with

the savings and loan scandals of the 1980s);JesseJackson (on his run for the

U.S. presidency); Oliver North Jr. (the Iran-Contra affair); Ronald Reagan

(diplomacy with Gorbachev); Arthur Anderson, Inc. (in connection with its

approach to auditing); Ken Lay (for his corporate leadership style); and dozens

of others. The phrase "Who was that masked man?" also appears frequently.

Both phrases typically evoke a man who goes against prevailing norms and risks alienation from institutional partners to achieve some goal that does not meet the approval of others.